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We argue that composition scholarship's defenses of language differences in student writing reinforce dominant ideology's spatial framework conceiving language difference as deviation from a norm of sameness. We argue instead for adopting a temporal-spatial framework defining difference as the norm of utterances, and defining languages, literacy practices, conventions, and contexts as always emergent, ongoing products of iterations, and thus manifestations of writer agency. Using the "White Shoes" essay from David Bartholomae's "Inventing the University," we show how such a framework addresses the writer's agency iterating the "same," and how it resolves concerns to meet students' need and right to learn both dominant and subordinate languages. (Contains 18 notes.)

Arguing against the emphasis of traditional U.S. composition classes on linguistically homogeneous situations, the authors contend that this focus is at odds with actual language use today. They call for a translingual approach, which they define as seeing difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading, and listening. (Contains 9 notes.)

The constitution of "rhetoric and composition" as a discipline is the subject of a long-standing and ongoing debate that grapples with what each of the terms might be said to signify in relation to the other, and why. Given the multiple meanings of rhetoric and composition, as well as the vexed history of institutional relationships between these two terms, it is important for scholars to trace how they are "worked"--that is, how they materially function--in a variety of specific circumstances. In this article, the authors begin by mapping the main questions embedded in particular definitions they see operating in common discourse about "rhetoric and composition." They delineate the ways in which specific definitions address some of these questions in light or disregard of others; the material conditions shaping particular notions of rhetoric and composition; and the ways in which individual notions impede or advance efforts to build more equitable and mutually constitutive relations across a rich array of strands working rhetoric and composition. Finally, they propose lines of inquiry by which such relations might be developed. These include, importantly, recognizing, and making more productive use of, relationships that "rhetoric and composition" might have with rhetorical study not affiliated with composition, and also with education and applied linguistics. (Contains 17 notes.)

Keeping in mind the Chinese character-combination "yuyan," with its multiple meanings of language, parts of language, the processes of language, and the products of those processes, the author depicts English as kept alive by many people and by many different ways of using it in a wide range of personal, social, and historical contexts. She proposes four lines of inquiry "against the grain" of English-only instruction--that living-English users weigh what English can do for them against what it has done to them; that they weigh what English can do against what it cannot do; that they understand English as being in the hands of all its users; and that they focus energy on how to tinker with the very standardized usages they are pressured to "imitate"--and discusses the implications of those lines of inquiry for composition in the United States. (Contains 1 figure.)

Argues that Basic Writing students, teachers, and scholarship are crucial to enabling colleges and universities to realize their ideals of diversity, interdisciplinarity, and student-centered learning. Calls for more research exploring the potential of basic writing students to develop (and help others develop) "borderland" perspectives which may assist in student retention and faculty revitalization. (SR)

Describes how struggle and conflict are constructive for writers. Examines why this view of conflict had rhetorical power historically for theorists. Explores how and why this view persists among basic writing teachers in the 1990s. (HB)

Argues that Mina Shaughnessy's view of language as a politically innocent vehicle of meaning overlooks basic writers' need to confront the dissonance they experience between academic and other discourses. Suggests educators need to abandon the limitations of the essentialist view of language informing their pedagogy. (KEH)

Min-Zhan Lu's reactions to comments on her article 'Conflict, Struggle and the Legacy of Mina Shaughnessy' show an inaccurate and distorted use of language. Her efforts to promote the academic study of conflict as a basis for many disciplines fail to recognize the diversity of the current student body and the dangers of polarization. Schools are already trying to integrate ideas and viewpoints they once considered outside their domain.